Category: Conferences and Events (Page 2 of 5)

Fun Local User Group Presentations – 2017

August 26, 2017 / jpries

Going through my notes, I thought I’d highlight some of the most fun or innovative local user group presentations I’ve been to so far this year.

Atlanta is fortunate to have many user groups, two specifically which I attend are the “Atlanta MDF” user group which usually meets the 2nd Monday of each month, and is typically focused more on the core SQL Server technologies and the “Atlanta BI” user group which usually meets the last Monday of each month and is focused on BI-specific topics. There are a number of other user groups, such as .NET and Excel, but its hard to find time to visit them all on a regular basis.

It is common for each user group meeting to have a main event, which is usually a speaker speaking on a topic for 1 – 1.5 hours or so. While it is great whenever anyone wants to volunteer their time to teach others, there have been a couple this year that really stood out to me, either for their creativity, content, or “fun” factor.

In March, a couple of the guys from Slalom, Dave Tangren and Nelson Davis, gave a talk on the benefits of Power BI vs. Tableau at the Atlanta BI meeting. This is interesting in of itself since these two products are direct competitors which are in an active battle, but what made this presentation really fun was that they modeled it as a political debate, with each product being a candidate. They had a moderator who would ask questions and then each candidate would give his answer. A really creative way to present this information!

Dave Tangren and Nelson Davis presenting “Comparing Power BI to Tableau” at the Atlanta BI March Meeting.

In April, Mike Bruce and Alex Higgins from Acuity Brands presented “Using Power BI to Track Software Development Performance,” in which they talked about their experiences using Power BI to connect to Visual Studio Online’s TFS repository to track their Agile projects. This was very interesting for a number of reasons — the integration between these sources of data, what they were trying to accomplish (and the road they’d traveled so far to get there) and their projects in general. Completely unrelated to Power BI, the store of how Acuity had transitioned from a manufacturing company (manufacturing lighting) to a software company (developing highly intelligent lighting technology, including lights which interface with retail store apps to locate a person in a store) was very interesting.

In August, Rob Collie presented “Ten Things Power BI Can Do For You” at the Atlanta MDF August Meeting. In this talk, Rob gave a history of Power Pivot (Project Gemini) from his time at Microsoft as well as his experiences in transitioning to a consulting organization specializing in Power Pivot. The entire presentation was non-technical and talked about the benefits of using Power Pivot (and DAX) with or without Power BI. A very interesting topic and Rob was a very good speaker, not afraid to call things as they are. I got a bit of an Office Space vibe from the style (in a good way!) I highly recommend you check out one of Rob’s presentations if he ever presents again in the area!

Rob Collie presenting “Ten Things Power BI Can Do For You” at the Atlanta MDF August Meeting.

Those are a few of the presentations from local user groups which have really stood out to me so far this year. Here’s to hoping for many more excellent presentations to come!

SQL Saturday Recap: #624 – Chattanooga, TN

July 9, 2017 / jpries

On Saturday, June 24th, I attended SQL Saturday #624 in Chattanooga, TN. I’m a bit behind in posting this writeup, so I’ll keep it short. This was my second time attending an event in Chattanooga (and I believe their 3rd overall). The event went very smoothly and had a very well selected schedule of speakers and topics. As with other Chattanooga SQL Saturdays, nobody leaves without being offered Moon Pies, which is a great and fun touch!

I attended a number of excellent sessions and really enjoyed my day in Chattanooga. With my crazy summer schedule, this looked to be the only summer event I’d be able to attend, so I’m glad it was a good one. Looking forward to visiting Chattanooga again some time in the future! See below for a few of my pictures from the event:

SQL Saturday Recap: #578 – Atlanta, GA (BI Edition)

December 12, 2016 / jpries

Saturday, December 10th marked the 2nd annual SQL Saturday Atlanta BI Edition. Atlanta is known for its massive SQL Saturday held every spring / summer, so I’m happy to see the smaller, more BI-focused winter event continuing on. With such a large number of SQL Server professionals in the area, there is definitely room for multiple events.

As with last year’s event, this one was a well-run event with no flaws that I was aware of. This year seemed to be a bit of a “back to basics” theme. Many of the extras that are frequently seen at SQL Saturday events — lots of sponsors, attendee bags and printed materials, speaker shirts, paper session evaluations, and other extras weren’t present. Instead, the focus was purely on providing a full day of content across multiple tracks, and you know what, that’s just fine. (Many) free donuts were provided for breakfast and boxed lunches were purchased, and everything was adequate. The core idea behind SQL Saturday is free training and networking, and the event delivered! I particularly thought the session lineup for this event was a great mix of topics.

October Lunch and Learn Presentation – Intro to Data Visualization

October 31, 2016 / jpries

October Lunch n Learn Lunch and learns are a great way for a team to learn new things, share that knowledge with each other, and practice presentation skills. We typically do casual 30 minute sessions in a group of IT developers which range from .NET to SQL Database to Business Intelligence.

For our October, Halloween-themed presentation, I chose to give an introductory presentation on data visualization, titled “Avoiding the Horrors of Scary Visualizations: An Introduction to Data Visualization.” The presentation was targeted toward people with no background in data visualization and started with a quick history and some of the key players (Tufte and Few), bridged into some tips and best practices, and closed with a number of examples of “scary” visualization examples.

Overall, the presentation went very well and seemed to be well received. The full presentation is available here.

SQL Saturday Recap: #560 – Charlotte, NC

September 18, 2016 / jpries

SQL Saturday 560 - Charlotte, NC This past Saturday marked Charlotte’s 5th consecutive SQL Saturday event, and my 4th in Charlotte (I missed last year’s due to a scheduling conflict) — SQL Saturday # 560. Also fun, this happened to mark the 20th SQL Saturday that I attended over the past few years — a pretty cool achievement!

As a change to this year over previous years, this year SQL Saturday Charlotte offered 2 all-day precons on Friday, both of which would sell out. With a “go big or go home” type attitude, they made life very difficult and forced me to choose between two incredible spears and presentations: Adam Machanic’s (B | T) “Tuning Your Biggest Queries” and Jen Underwood’s (B | T) “Advanced Analytics” With two fantastic speakers to choose from, each with a great, and relevant, session, I had some decisions to make.

After an easy drive from north Atlanta to Charlotte after work on Thursday, I headed out bright and early Friday morning to attend Jen Underwood’s (B | T) “Advanced Analytics” The precons were held in an off-campus location, the Ballantyne Center, which worked out to be a pretty decent venue. Adam’s precon was held in a standard classroom and Jen’s precon was held in a computer lab, which provided each person a computer with a solid network connection and the ability to follow along with the presentation slides and run the lab exercises locally.

Jen Underwood presenting Advanced Analytics

Jen’s Analytics precon was an excellent session and a great introduction to the topic. The topic is far too deep to cover in a single day session, but Jen did a good job of hitting the highlights and getting people introduced to the material and inspired by the possibilities of the subject with plenty of resources for further learning. This was certainly time well spent!

SQL Saturday Recap: #521 – Atlanta, GA

May 22, 2016 / jpries

SQL Saturday Roundup: #521 – Atlanta, GA

This past Saturday marked the annual event that many of us look forward to all year long. Called by some to be the “Summit of the South,” SQL Saturday Atlanta is always a large and very professionally run event which draws hordes of SQL Server Professionals nationwide. Again, this year, the event did not disappoint. Despite the initial overcast and rainy weather which opened up the day, a record number of 590 attendees attended this awesome event!

For the second year in a row, I volunteered my time to help make the event as great as it could be. For the first time in the past few years, I was did not attend any of the event’s preconference sessions, which typically run all day on Friday. That being said, the sessions that were being given were excellent topics which were presented by some truly great speakers. I’m sure everyone who attended learned a ton and had a great time.

While I didn’t attend any preconference sessions on Friday, SQL Saturday Atlanta did still begin for me on Friday when I headed over to the site Friday afternoon to begin helping with prep. We had a great group of organizers and volunteers onsite to perform the bag stuffing and venue setup. Additionally, this year, the decision was made to pre-print all of the attendee admission tickets, name badges, and raffle tickets (rather than relying on attendees to pre-print their items at home prior to the event to bring them with). This allowed for nicer name badges and perforated raffle tickets to be used, but was a very laborious process collating and assembling the packets for the morning’s registration. I ended up spending all of my time Friday afternoon helping out with the registration packet assembly process.

SQL Saturday Recap: #477 – Atlanta, GA (BI Edition)

January 13, 2016 / jpries

SQL Saturday Roundup: #477 – Atlanta, GA (BI Edition)

This past Saturday marked a great landmark for Atlanta — the first “BI Edition” SQL Saturday, and, for many of us, our first SQL Saturday of 2016! Atlanta has been hosting a regular SQL Saturday event for many years now, always with tremendous attendance. Based on the amount of interest in the regular SQL Saturday (usually around May of each year), it was great to see a BI focused edition launched.

With the regular event in the Spring, having this event in January was a great way to space out the two Atlanta events probably about as equally as they could be. And, for a first event, it seemed to be a tremendous success with a registration wait list and around 300 in attendance.

The event was held at the local Microsoft facility in Alpharetta, GA, where the monthly Atlanta MDF user group meetings are held. All told, the facility was a pretty good choice of venue (and definitely a convenient location), but suffered from some overcrowding. The facility had about half the sessions in roughly classroom sized rooms and half the sessions in much smaller conference room sized rooms. While these smaller rooms made for an interesting and more intimate setting, they ultimately filled up very quickly.

Unlike many SQL Saturdays, the event kicked off with an opening keynote and presentation in the large room (multiple rooms joined together technically). I enjoy it when a SQL Saturday begins with some sort of all-attendee opening remarks, it provides nice symmetry to the event (which always has a final closing remarks session), so hopefully more events will adopt this.

Dandy Weyn presenting the opening remarks at SQL Saturday Atlanta 2016, BI Edition.

PASS Summit 2015 Recap — My Third Summit

November 5, 2015 / jpries

Now in my third year, I recently attended PASS Summit in Seattle, Washington. This was my second visit to Seattle for PASS Summit, with my first Summit experience in Charlotte, NC. Having experience my “first time in Seattle for Summit” last year, I had a pretty good idea of where things were and what things would be going on and when and for the most part, things followed the previous year’s pattern very closely.

I arrived in Seattle a few days early so I could work some sightseeing in. While it’s generally not a good idea to try to have a rental car during the conference, in the days leading up to the conference when you want to see a lot of places, it’s the way to go. I rented a car from the airport and made my way down to Portland for a couple of nights.

I spent my first two days of vacation, Saturday and Sunday doing some geocaching and exploring the Portland area. The weather was overcast but nice the first day and lots of rain the second day. I’d really wanted to see Mt. Hood, but unfortunately the weather didn’t cooperate at all.

Mt. Rainier while driving down to Portland after arriving in Seattle

Counting Down to PASS Summit 2015

September 14, 2015 / jpries

We’re a little over a month away from the start of PASS Summit 2015 on October 27th, it’s time for planning to begin. PASS Summit is an annual conference (usually held in Seattle, WA) of over 5,000 data professionals focusing on all things SQL Server. Unlike many conferences, this is very much a “for the people, by the people” type of conference where practical knowledge is the focus.

As with any large conference, there is a lot of planning to be done to get the most out of attending. In additional to all the usual travel and accommodation logistics, there is whether or not to attend any pre-conference sessions, which of the over 200 sessions to plan to attend over the 3 days of the event, and which after hours events to attend.

SQL Saturday Recap: #410 – Chattanooga, TN

June 29, 2015 / jpries

SQL Saturday Roundup: #410 – Chattanooga, TN

This past weekend, I had the privilege of volunteering to help Chattanooga, TN execute their first SQL Saturday — SQL Saturday 410! Being only about a two hour drive from where I live, I was very happy to see another nearby city launch a new SQL Saturday event. For a first-run event, the event went very smoothly and I witnessed no show-stopping glitches. While there were small things that could be improved here and there (there always are), I felt the event was executed very well and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. All told, there were about six full sponsor tables setup in the registration area and a couple of the typical raffle-only sponsors. I assisted with event photos and room proctoring. And, of course, Micron was present again with their always popular bacon-scented t-shirt!

Despite being a new event, the organizers managed to recruit a good number of speakers and managed to fill out 6 different tracks of 5 time slots. A great feat! I’ve seen longer running events with fewer sessions available. A good number of sessions helps to increase the diversity and ensures that there is “something for everybody.” The venue itself worked out great with ample parking, ample rooms, and ample space in rooms. Only the first session I attended was near capacity, which was great (since nobody wants to miss a session due to not enough seats).

All told, I had a great time at the first SQL Saturday Chattanooga and I felt the event was very well done and I look forward to future events from the Chattanooga crew!

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